This invention relates to systems and methods for analyzing data, and more particularly to a system and method for analyzing transportation data.
Many businesses ship goods from an initial location, such as a supplier, to a secondary location, such as a retail location, or to an intermediate location, such as a distribution center. Goods may also arrive and depart from multiple retail locations before reaching a destination retail location. The term “supply chain” usually refers to this transportation of goods from supplier to customer. Transportation data may be recorded at each location. Transportation data may include a time and date of arrival and departure of a particular set of goods. In some cases, radio frequency identification (“RFID”) tags may be placed on a group of goods to assist in recording transportation data.
In addition to tracking a time of arrival and departure of goods, additional transportation data may be recorded, such as environment data. In the example of perishable food items, a temperature of the goods may be recorded to ensure that perishable goods remain within a required temperature range. The term “cold chain” is used to refer to a temperature-controlled supply chain.
Analyzing a supply chain can be complex and computationally demanding. In particular, when a company uses multiple couriers to transport a high volume of goods having different shipping requirements to multiple secondary locations and multiple intermediate locations, the complexity of analyzing supply chain data can increase significantly.